signed-firsts

Damascus Gate (1998) Signed First Edition Reference

Approx. 2 min read · 4 May 2026

Damascus Gate is Robert Stone’s Jerusalem novel — a sprawling, densely plotted exploration of religious obsession, political intrigue, and the particular madness that the Holy City breeds in believers and seekers. Published by Houghton Mifflin in 1998, it follows Christopher Lucas, a freelance journalist and the half-Jewish son of a Communist father, as he navigates Jerusalem’s overlapping worlds of Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Christianity, Islamic fundamentalism, and secular intelligence operations.

The Novel

Stone spent years researching Jerusalem, making multiple trips and immersing himself in the city’s religious and political complexities. The result is his most ambitious setting — a city where three world religions collide, where prophecy and politics are indistinguishable, and where every stone carries millennia of sacred and violent history.

Lucas becomes entangled with a conspiracy to blow up the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — a plot that brings together messianic Jews, apocalyptic Christians, and cynical intelligence operatives in a volatile mixture. The novel explores Stone’s characteristic theme — the intersection of idealism and corruption — in an explicitly religious context, asking whether faith itself is a form of the self-deception that has always fascinated him.

Reviews were respectful but noted the novel’s density and the challenge of its subject matter. Damascus Gate is not an easy read — it demands knowledge of Middle Eastern politics, religious history, and Stone’s own body of work — but for engaged readers, it is among his most rewarding novels.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, Boston Publication date: 1998 Copyright page: First printing per Houghton Mifflin convention

Signed Copy Market Values

Signed first edition, fine/fine: $75–$200
Inscribed copies: $100–$300
Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $15–$40

Accessibly priced and readily available in signed form, Damascus Gate represents Stone’s most intellectually ambitious later work. For collectors interested in the American novel’s engagement with religion and the Middle East, this is an important and affordable title.